


Stranger from the West

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Great Hiatus, Hiatus, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:45:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8420086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: A stranger appears at Victor Trevor's door, bringing both old memories and new revelations.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,_  
>  _Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;_  
>  _But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,_  
>  _When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth._  
>  -Rudyard Kipling

The rain fell in angry, fat splotches. It was the eleventh day of downpours and the skies gave no reason to doubt there would be a twelfth, and a thirteenth. It was to be expected of July in Terai. The rain was good for crops, good for business, but that didn’t stop Victor Trevor from dreading the rainy season. When the grasslands flooded, worms and beetles swarmed over tree roots, or boots. Rain drove crawling, subterranean things into the light, and that was reason enough to hate it. When the rainy season came, Trevor retreated to his study with a cigar and too much brandy, slipping into half-waking dreams. He finished his glass and sunk into his chair, ready.

Rain slapped the tiles on the roof and spattered loudly on the flat earth outside. Rain thumped, pounded, hammered—his head pulsed to its sounds. Banging, desperate, yelling. Footsteps, hinges. Not the rain then, but the door. A mumble of barely-audible voices, and then his valet appeared, wobbling in the doorway of his study.

"Well, who was it?" barked Trevor. 

"I am not knowing, sir. A stranger, sir."

"What is his name?"

"He would not give any, sir.”

“What does he want, then?"

"He says you are knowing him, sir, and he is wanting a moment's conversation, sir.”

“Oh, very well,” Trevor assented, “you may show him in.”

Trevor brushed off his man with a more discourteous wave of the hand than he ordinarily would and hoisted himself to his feet. He leaned against the mantle, hoping to look imperious. His pulse rose loud and mischievous in his ears. He did not, as a rule, believe in ill omens, but there was a disquieting familiarity, which unnerved him: a malevolent _déjà vu_. Not that he would admit to such; he considered it only ordinary prudence to be distrustful of a strange visitor on a dreary night.

Hardly an instant passed before the stranger staggered through the door. He was a bent, ragged looking man in tattered clothes and worn chappals, which exposed his rough-calloused feet. He was everywhere soaked with rain, which dripped from him into fetid pools on the study floor. When Trevor looked upon the man's thin, browned face, he was suddenly seized by a terror of recognition. Icy fingers coiled around his heart, for the man before him seemed none other than—  
  
"Hudson!"  
  
The sinister man chuckled to himself and nudged closed the door with one toe.   
  
"Hardly," said a voice distantly familiar. "Though you've the initial right."  
  
In a ribbon of speed, the stranger pulled fast the shutters, seeming to grow taller as the room closed in around them. Trevor thought to call out, but could not find the voice to do so. He watched, as if paralyzed, as this shrinking little man transformed before him into a tall, lean gentleman, whose face belonged not to the sniveling ghost of Hudson, but to someone else altogether.  
  
“Holmes!” exclaimed Trevor, “My God, man, I should never have recognized you.”

Holmes straightened at last to his full height, rolling a stiff shoulder. “Whereas I should have known you anywhere. You’re the image of your father, Victor.”

Trevor supposed he was; he was broader now, rounder, with his father’s brawny arms. That ought not, Trevor told himself, to have been a compliment, all things considered. Nevertheless, he smiled at the thought. He gazed again at his friend, shaking his head in wonder.

"But, how? What brings you here, and in such a fashion?"  
  
"I am afraid I come to you in very dire straights, and must ask for your assistance."  
  
"Anything, Holmes," the name was strange and wonderful on his lips. "Only tell me—“  
  
“I dare not ask much, only have your man bring me a meal and some dry clothes, and dismiss him for the night. Then, I shall reveal all."

 

With a full belly and clean attire, Holmes was himself again. Warm and dry, he tucked his sore legs under himself as he settled into a chair and into his account. It was all Trevor could do to listen in awe as Holmes told of his career in London, how his work had uncovered the sinister web and led to his fatal grappling with the spider himself in Switzerland. In the last two years, he had travelled more miles than he could count, adopted more names than he could remember. He looked at least twice as tired as he claimed to be. Trevor regretted he could offer no more than sanctuary, yet even that Holmes seemed reluctant to accept.

“I fear I should only endanger you by staying long.”

“You said yourself you lost them in Calcutta. A few days rest… I should be much offended if you came all this way only to say ‘hello’.”

A smile tugged at one corner of Holmes’s mouth. He had always responded well to chiding. He needed to be goaded into things, particularly things like friendships.

Trevor could not help but stare at him, at his appalling thinness, his calloused feet, his haggard expression which made his eyes seem larger and more ghostly. Their eyes met, and they held each other’s gaze, each man trying to find the familiar face in the stranger’s. Each man a little terrified when he found it.

They were both thinking of a night in Norfolk, when two young men—boys, really—had crept from their beds in the darkest hour of night to make amateur astronomers of themselves. Past the front lawn, through the rushes, the heavens were reflected in the still, perfect waters of the Broads. Stars overhead, stars below: the world seemed swallowed up in their light. The boys picked their way to a clearing and laid in the tall grass, misidentifying constellations to the tune of crickets.

They both remembered it the same: someone had put his hand on the other's. Someone shifted his weight until they were one atop another; until their faces were so very, very close; until their lips were touching and one boy wrapped his legs around the other as if he meant to keep him there. They kissed and groped blindly, stupidly, until they felt as though they might explode, until someone said "I can't" and that was the end of it. 

The air in the room was thick with remembering.

"I am sorry it took so long and such circumstances for me to see you again.”

Trevor smirked an audible smirk. "When I came here, I never expected I should see anyone again."

"You don't miss England." An observation, not a question.

"No.” Trevor surprised himself with the assurance in his voice. “No, the best thing about Terai is there's enough rain here to make an Englishman feel quite at home… The things I do miss are mostly gone, anyhow—the dad and the old house—I try not to trouble myself over it. Though, every now and again, I do think about an old chum of mine from my university days…”

“This is your wife?" asked Holmes, raising the silver frame from its place on the mantle. 

"Yes," Trevor answered, and he was hasty—too hasty—to add, "She's visiting family back home."

Holmes did not seem to take the meaning in this information. He did not meet Trevor’s gaze, or smile secretly to himself. He merely pursed his lips, eyes running over the photograph, piecing together what could be from the stoic rendering.

"She's very handsome," he concluded.

And, reflexively, Trevor answered: 

"Yes, isn't she." 

Even though she was not. Her teeth were too big for her mouth; even with a closed-lipped smile, she gave the impression of trying to smuggle orange segments behind her lips. What she was was a woman who was willing to live on a plantation fifteen miles from the nearest town, who would take a man like him for a husband, and who was more capable than he at managing their estate. She was strong-willed, and, Trevor supposed, there was a handsomeness in that—perhaps that was what Holmes could see.

“Holmes, will you stay here?”

“For a few days,” agreed Holmes as he set the frame back in its place.

 

In the morning, Holmes was again forced to don the imitation of Hudson, much to the chagrin of the household staff who had no choice but to indulge their master’s rakish new houseguest. Tensions were worsened by the weather; rains kept everyone indoors and underfoot all day. It was all Trevor could do to keep himself out of it, lest his laughter at Holmes’s charade give away the whole thing.

At night, however, with the shutters pulled shut and the rest of the house abed, Holmes was again Holmes. In the seeming safety of the study, they drank brandy or palm wine, until their conversations flowed, until Trevor’s face felt hot and numb, until Holmes declared ‘enough’ and took himself to bed. Then, Trevor would stumble to a bed of his own. He would lie down and watch the ceiling swirl hypnotically above him. He would close his eyes, trying not to think about the man in the room next to him, and, eventually, he would sleep.

The fifth night of Holmes’s stay began in the same way: shutters pulled, bottles opened, stories told, ‘goodnight’s said, beds filled. But, try as he might, Trevor could not seem to find sleep. He rose, and without much thought, his feet led him to a door, through it, to the foot of a bed. He had not even realized which bed, precisely, until he heard Holmes’s voice emerge from the darkness:

“You are very lucky to have a memorable silhouette,” Holmes was saying, “or you should have found yourself with a bullet in your chest.”

Trevor mumbled an apology to the sound of a pistol hammer sliding carefully back into place. Perhaps it was the liquor, but he did not feel terribly menaced. Without an invitation, he sat down upon the end of the bed. He thought of strange, fragile, young Holmes with a gun upon him and laughed.

“You probably would have missed me—you always were a lousy shot.”

“I’m not much better now,” admitted Holmes with a grin that caught the traces of moonlight. “Shouldn’t need to be to hit a target like you.”

“‘Ey, lay off!”

Trevor slapped Holmes’s knee through the bedclothes. Holmes kicked him in the ribs. Arms and legs and sheets flew, kicking, shoving, tumbling. Trevor laughed until his sides ached and Holmes wheezed with a dry, hissing giggle.

They were both thinking the same thing: this place was no longer Terai. The year was not 1893. It was ten—no, fifteen?—years ago, and a summer night in Norfolk. Someone put his hand over the other’s. Someone shifted until they were one atop the other. When they kissed, they both tasted of palm wine and cigars. No one said “I can’t” when Trevor’s hand slid beneath Holmes’s borrowed nightshirt. No one said anything as their bodies tangled and moved against each other. For a beautiful, brief moment, they were all there was.

Trevor could pinpoint the instant he lost Holmes’s attention. Holmes's eyes shut tight. His hands sharpened their grip, molding and reshaping the skin before him. Trevor knew another's features were being mapped over his own. Someone else's fingers were curling around Holmes's cock. Holmes’s breath caught for someone else. When he kissed him, it was with someone else's lips. Trevor knew this and he didn't mind; he, too, was thinking of something else. Something intangible. The lost promises of youth, the smell of rain in an English garden, the comforting certainty of being someone he no longer could be. He didn’t know why, but as his climax came he felt like crying. He probably would have, if Holmes hadn’t jolted suddenly, knocking their foreheads together in the dark.

They winced and laughed at themselves, but now with the measured, discomforted laughter of the present. They were once more in Terai, and the night was once again tonight. They did not hold each other, but laid side by side, starring up into the darkness. Outside, the rain still crashed against the house, drowning the silence in its static ululations.

“Victor?”

“Hm?”

Holmes took a breath and another. His lips parted and then closed. Words were sticking to the inside of his mouth, destroying themselves, and remolded from the wreckage was:

“I have to be going soon.”

“I see,” said Trevor, trying not to sound disappointed by the words, nor by their meaning. “Where will you go?”

“East, I think. Into the mountains. A man should have to be a fool to follow me there…”

All Trevor knew of the Himalayas, beyond their distant grey silhouette on the horizon, were tales of cold and death. Trevor tried to picture Holmes there, shivering hands even less useful with a revolver, waiting forever for the assassins that would never come. It was too lonely a fate.

“As someone who ran East from his problems, I don't recommend it. Don’t make my mistake."

“You don’t miss England,” Holmes reminded him.

“No, but you do.” An observation, not a question.

Holmes hummed, as if to say he appreciated unsolicited opinions now precisely as little as he did fifteen years ago.

"Holmes," Trevor continued, "I'm going to give you some advice—you don't have to take it, but you'll have to hear it: whoever it is you were thinking of tonight... that is where you should be. Not here. Not hiding in some hole in Kathmandu.“

Trevor expected a protest, a scoff, a brush off. He expected to have guessed wrongly, and to be taunted for it, like when they played the deductions game at university. He did not expect for Holmes to take his hand, to squeeze it tightly, to draw it to his chest. He could never have expected that when he spoke, Holmes's voice would sound so small, so fragile as it did. 

"I should not like to endanger him."

 _I should not like to endanger him._ Trevor let the words ping about the room. He considered them, weighed them, especially the last. _Him_. He thought about _him_ in comparison to himself. He thought of _him_ in relation to Holmes. What could be said? These were not things which were spoken.

"Some men should face death itself for the sake of love,” Trevor managed at last.

“He’s married.”

“Well, I’m married, and here we are.”

Holmes was quiet and, Trevor hoped, considering.

“The rain has stopped.”

Trevor listened. “So it has.”

They laced their fingers together. Slowly, someone rolled to one side, and someone else settled in close to him. They buried their noses against one another. Somewhere, behind the changes in colognes and soaps and bodily chemicals there lingered some trace of the scents etched so permanently into each other’s minds. For the first time in a decade, Victor Trevor was thankful to be where he was.

When he woke in the morning, Trevor was unfazed to discover Holmes had gone. In the absence of rain, the air smelled green and fresh. As he looked out over the tea fields, he found he was not sorry Holmes had left; he only hoped he’d travelled West.


End file.
